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OPINION

PARKER: O’Reilly low rent for big bucks

Published 1:36 p.m. ET April 13, 2017

CLOSE

The ratings for Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News Channel program “The O'Reilly Factor,” went up despite reports detailing payouts made to settle accusations against him of sexual harassment and other inappropriate behavior.(Photo: AP)

WASHINGTON — Despite recent revelations that Fox News and anchor Bill O’Reilly had settled five complaints of sexual harassment against him to the tune of millions — his ratings went up.

A few days later, a United AirIines passenger was dragged from an airplane to make room for crew members on a full flight — and United’s stock initially went up.

And for this, we pay good money?

The shock wasn’t so much that monetary values seem to increase in direct correlation to the diminution of moral values but that we’ve become passive bystanders to appalling behavior and allegations. Well beyond defining deviancy down, as the great statesman Daniel Patrick Moynihan once described our cultural devolution — we hardly know what it is anymore.

Which reminds me of another great social observer, author Flannery O’Connor. Frequently asked why Southerners write so much about freaks, she replied that it was because Southerners could still recognize them. Whether this was ever true is debatable only beyond the Confederate states.

What is true today is that social media has become the church lady and the party-line operator rolled into one. If somebody misbehaves, not just two people know about it. Within hours or minutes, millions do. Like a single organism endowed with the accumulated moral fortitude of human society, Twitter demands justice.

In viral videos of the airplane fiasco, passengers are heard protesting as security officials dragged the man down the aisle toward the exit. But even their objections were relatively muted. Was this a one-off, crazy incident, they must have wondered? Or, was it just a matter of time until the blood-sucking, tentacled tripod machines in “War of the Worlds” reach down to select their next human cocktail to drain? But maybe that’s just me.

Still. It happened. Right here in the USA. On a plane. To a random guy.

United stocks rallied and the friendly skies were no wiser.

That is, until the outrage gathering on social media reached investors. By the time the market closed Tuesday, United’s shares were down 1.1 percent and the company had lost $255 million in market value — not because of the airline’s treatment of the passenger but because of investors’ loss of faith in the company’s ability to handle a crisis.

As for O’Reilly, o’really?

Yes, my fellow Americans, not only is O’Reilly a smug, sarcastic, windbag/anchor of the self-promoting commercial called “The O’Reilly Factor,” he is also allegedly a sex talker of some renown.

Thirteen years ago, O’Reilly settled with a “Factor” associate producer, Andrea Mackris, who sued for sexual harassment. Specifically, she alleged that in telephone conversations, he bragged about his global sexual exploits, encouraged her to release tensions with a mechanical aid, and spoke of a shower fantasy with Mackris.

The upshot of the Mackris and more recent Fox News scandals was that women were paid for their silence, in some cases quite well. Gretchen Carlson was awarded $20 million to settle her suit alleging that Fox News boss Roger Ailes sexually harassed her for several years. Ailes is gone; Carlson is rich.

Mackris was paid as well, though not nearly so well. The tapes she supposedly had that would have proved her case were never released, she faded into scandal history, and O’Reilly went on to become Fox’s ratings god for reasons I’ve failed to glean.

Then #bootoreilly was born and thousands of women shared their experiences with workplace harassment. At last count, more than 60 advertisers, including Jenny Craig, Advil and Mercedes-Benz, pulled their commercials from the show. Even O’Reilly is only as valuable as the bucks he brings in.

In a pre-Twitter age, the United event might have gone unnoticed by more than a few reporters who corralled a few passengers for interviews — if that. Pre-social media, allegations of O’Reilly’s brutish behavior might have been passed off as just-a-guy having some innocent fun.

Alas, and for good, the party’s over for boors and bullies. Except, of course, for the president of the United States.